Disposable and durable products such as diapers, adult incontinence articles, feminine hygiene tampons, sanitary napkins, bandages, underpants, shirts, shorts, swimsuits, gowns, pants, coats, gloves, scarves, surgical drapes, bibs, blankets, sheets, pillow cases, mops, etc. may be manufactured on high speed converting lines. A converting line utilizes a web-based carrier to which many source materials, whether in a continuous web or discrete pieces, are processed and/or attached to the web to create a finished product.
Although a converting line may allow for high speed production, typical converting lines are inflexible in that line changes are time consuming and expensive. Product development and implementation of product upgrades usually require extensive testing and construction efforts. A product upgrade may, for example, require the following steps: constructing manual or handmade products incorporating the upgrade in order to test the concept and determine consumer acceptance of such an upgrade; constructing a machine production unit that may manufacture the product upgrade and/or the entire product incorporating the upgrade in order to determine product and process feasibility; constructing a high speed test stand that may manufacture the product upgrade in isolation at high speeds in order to test the feasibility of high speed manufacturing; constructing a prototype line that is able to make complete prototype products at high speeds; reconstructing a high speed production line to implement the process changes necessary for the product upgrade; and testing and debugging the production line. These efforts may be expensive and time consuming, especially when the reconstruction, testing and debugging steps lead to down time of a high speed production line. Then, when a product upgrade is rolled out on multiple production lines, the time and money required to implement even a small change in each individual line may increase dramatically. Often, the time and money required will be prohibitive, and highly desirable product upgrades may be delayed or even eliminated.
Attempts to increase the flexibility of a converting line have been made. U.S. Pat. No. 5,383,988 entitled “Modular Apparatus for Fabricating an Absorbent Article,” issued to Thomas R. Herrmann et al. on Jan. 24, 1995 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,492,591 entitled “Modular Apparatus for Fabricating an Absorbent Article,” issued to Thomas R. Herrmann et al. on Feb. 20, 1996, for example, describe a system for fabricating absorbent articles that includes a linear array of substantially identical frame modules joined together. A plurality of substantially identical, removable panels that support working devices are mounted to one face of the modules. The Herrmann references describe that mounting the working devices to the removable panels facilitates rapid installation, servicing, adjustment of the working devices and accommodates convenient observation of the operation of such devices.
Another attempt to increase the flexibility of a converting line is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,868,899 entitled “Process Line for the Production of Absorbent Disposable Products,” issued to Dag H. Gundersen on Feb. 9, 1999, which describes a converting line for manufacturing disposable absorbent articles in which removable rectangular carrier plates that carry working devices are attached to vertical and horizontal posts. The posts are arranged sequentially in a framework on the same side of and parallel to a conveyor path movement. The Gundersen reference describes that the working devices in the converting line may be removed from, replaced or inserted into the converting line by removing, replacing or inserting the carrier plate to or from the framework of vertical and horizontal posts.
Although these efforts may allow for quicker physical construction or reconstruction of a converting line once the process for manufacturing a newly developed product has been developed off-line, the steps of constructing a machine production unit that may manufacture the product upgrade and/or the entire product incorporating the upgrade in order to determine product and process feasibility; constructing a high speed test stand that may manufacture the product upgrade in isolation at high speeds in order to test the feasibility of high speed manufacturing; and constructing a prototype line that is able to make complete prototype products at high speeds are still required. Also, the lines disclosed in the Herrmann and Gundersen references, once constructed, still require significant testing and debugging time before the line may be used for production of products. Thus, a method allowing for quicker product and process development is desired. Minimizing down time due to testing and debugging a production converting line after construction or reconstruction is also desirable.
Further, a typical product upgrade may be product-focused and includes changing one or more particular product features. In a disposable diaper, for example, a product upgrade may include making a multiple-layer back ear extensible. On a typical diaper converting line, each layer that ultimately forms part of the back ear may be introduced into the line, processed at various points along the line, combined together and attached to a carrier web. Various other operations that form other parts of the finished disposable diaper may be physically interspersed with these operations. Thus, the operations that produce a particular feature of the disposable diaper such as a multiple-layer back ear are located at various locations throughout the converting line. A product upgrade that makes the back ear extensible, for example, may involve changes to multiple operations that are spread throughout the converting line.
In addition, the control programming that controls each operation for producing the particular feature of the disposable product may be dispersed throughout the code for the entire converting line. Changing the control code for the particular upgrade may often include making changes in many different sections of the code that control particular operations that form the particular product feature being altered. Changes to multiple operations interspersed between operations not related to the product upgrade may also require changes to the control programming that handles any synchronization between each of these operations.
Changing out particular operations in different physical locations throughout the line as well as tracking down and changing code sections that control those operations in a program that controls the entire converting line may be time consuming, may result in inefficient problem-solving and may result in expensive down time of a high-speed production line. In contrast, however, bringing the physical operations that form a particular feature together and/or bringing the software code sections together that control the formation of the particular product feature together may result in efficiencies that cut both development time and change-over time for developing and implementing a product upgrade. These efficiencies may result in faster innovation, and quicker, more frequent and less expensive product upgrades.